Consumers that want to prepare for a possible problem purchase both health insurance and auto insurance. So, what happens if an accident victim with health insurance enjoys that coverage, and then seeks compensation from the auto insurer?
That initiates a procedure known as subrogation.
Subrogation is another name for the act of paying off a lien. The health insurance can file a lien against the lawsuit that was initiated by the plaintiff. The laws that deal with the specifics of subrogation vary from state to state. Some of those laws work to determine the strength of a claim. Others determine how extensive a claim could be.
The government can ask to be paid back.
It could make that request if the accident victim had carried coverage from Medicare or Medicaid. Sometimes, if the government has engaged in a quest for subrogation, the government’s action affects the lien holder’s claim. Consequently, that same claim gets reduced.
Some lawyers are more familiar than others with subrogation by a government body. Older clients should seek out an attorney that knows how to deal with government efforts to engage in subrogation. Those efforts could trigger a round of negotiations. That would tend to lengthen the time required for settling on the size of a given claim.
What happens after a lien has been paid off? At that point, the attorney that got a percentage of a client’s award money has less money than the same attorney had, before the government had stepped in. Still, an experienced Personal Injury Lawyer in Kitchener recognizes the ideal way to plan for a potential reduction in the agreed percentage of the client’s award.
An attorney’s experience should have highlighted the wisdom behind providing each client with the best services possible. By becoming a strong advocate for a plaintiff in a personal injury case, a member of the legal community has a better chance for winning the plaintiff’s case. Naturally, a win guarantees the awarding of funds to the lawyer-plaintiff team.
Because those team players worked together, in order to achieve that win, the 2 of them share the awarded funds. Granted, if some of those funds duplicate an amount of money that was received from the government, then the plaintiff’s attorney does owe money to the government.
Yet, a lawyer’s ability to advocate for a client could work to increase the award’s size. Consequently, a lowering of the number of funds in the plaintiff’s award would not result in a huge reduction, with respect to the client’s payment to the hired lawyer. In other words, top-notch lawyers do not have to worry repeatedly about the effects of demands for subrogation, if a health insurer has covered a client’s medical expenses.